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Their primary disagreement with the rest of the Church was over the treatment of those who forsook their faith during the Persecution ( 303 - 305 AD) of Diocletian. The rest of the Church was far more forgiving of these people than the Donatists were. They refused to accept the sacraments and spiritual authority of the priests and bishops who had fallen away from the faith during the persecution. Many church leaders had gone as far as turning in Christians to the Roman authorities and had publicly burned sacred religious texts. These men had returned to positions of authority under Constantine, and the Donatists proclaimed any sacraments celebrated by these priests and bishops were invalid. As a result, many towns were divided between Donatist and non-Donatist congregations. The sect had particularly developed and grew in North Africa.
The Donatist's distaste for bishops who had collaborated with Rome came out of their broader view of the Roman empire. After the Constantinian shift when other Christians accepted the emperor as the head of the church, the Donatists continued to see the emperor as the devil. In particular, the birth of the Donatist movement came out of opposition to the appointment of Caecilian as bishop of Carthage in 312 AD because of his pro-government stance.
Yet Donatists were more than just an opposition movement. They also had a distinctive worship styles, emphasizing ‘mystical union of the righteous inspired by the Holy Spirit and instructed by the Bible1. Anabaptists and other radical church traditions have looked to Donatists as historical predecessors because of their opposition to the union of state and church, their emphasis on discipleship and, in some cases, their commitment to nonviolence and social justice. Like those in the Radical Reformation in the 16th century, the Donatists saw the Catholics as impure and corrupted.
The Donatists also drew their beliefs from the writings of TertullianQuintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (b. 150- 160, d. 220- 240) is a highly ambivalent character in early Christianity. On one hand, he was the first great writer of Latin Christianity. He was born, lived, wrote, and died in Carthage, in what is today Tun and CyprianThis page does not concern Cyprian, Metropolitan of Moscow. Biography Saint Cyprian (Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus), bishop of Carthage and an important early Christian writer, was born probably at the beginning of the third century in North Africa, perhap.
AugustineAurelius Augustinus Augustine of Hippo ( 354 430) is a saint and the pre-eminent Doctor of the Church according to Roman Catholicism; he was the eldest son of Saint Monica. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, which does not accept all of his teachings, he is campaigned against this heterodox belief throughout his tenure as bishop of Hippo, and through his efforts the Church gained the upper hand. His successes were reversed when the Vandals conquered North AfricaNorth Africa is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert, comprising the Maghreb, including Libya and Egypt, and also by some definitions the Sudan. North Africa is vastly more uniform ethnically than anywhere in Africa south of th. Donatism survived the Vandal occupation and the Byzantine reconquest under Justinian. It is unknown how long this belief persisted into the Moslem period, but many historians believe the Donatist schism and the discord it caused in the Christian community made the take over of the region by Islam easier.2